This research program is designed to elucidate those metabolic factors which exert a significant influence on the nutritional state of extensively burned patients. The protocols include both clinical and laboratory observations utilizing extensively burned patients and animals as a trauma model, since thermal trauma may be easily classified in terms of "magnitude of injury". Specific research techniques include the investigation of neural-hormonal control of the hypermetabolic response to trauma, the effect of topical antimicrobial agents on hypermetabolic response, the study of serum factors which modulate organ metabolic rate following burn injury, the utilization of specific amino acids as precursors for hormones involved in the hypermetabolic response, and the study of tissue fuel sources at the cellular level required to support the increased oxygen consumption following trauma.